Musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová were not an item when they played the MFEO lovers of Once, but that relationship status changed after the movie’s release. By the time they deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Original Song the following year, they were sharing more than honors. Taking its name from Hansard and […]
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Underworld: Awakening
This chapter finds a virus loosed on the public that turns them into vampires and lycans upon infection. With no cure in sight, martial law has been declared, with a “mass cleansing” immediately following. Amid this chaos, vampire super heroine Selene (Beckinsale, Contraband, Whiteout) is captured, only to awaken in and escape from a high-security […]
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Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Of Adult Swim (Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) and Funny or Die Presents infamy, comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim play themselves. Having just squandered a billion dollars of the Schlaaang Corporation’s money on a feature film that somehow runs all of three minutes and stars a guy who isn’t really Johnny Depp, […]
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Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass
As the subtitle suggests, Greenberg offers a fly-on-the-wall account of celebrated director Werner Herzog shooting his 1976 feature, Heart of Glass. While hardly among the greatest entries on the German filmmaker’s résumé, it’s notable for being the one where he hypnotized most of the cast before shooting every scene. For Herzog, it was merely an […]
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The Shock Labyrinth
This is surprising, given that the Japanese horror feature was directed by Takashi Shimizu, the guy who birthed The Grudge franchise. Not that he’s an infallible filmmaker by any stretch of the imagination, but Labyrinth finds him revisiting those reliable themes, with the added dimension — literally — of playing in 3-D. (Well Go USA’s […]
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Strip Strip Hooray!
If you’ve seen one of these black-and-white oddities, you’ve seen them all, whether or not they’re included here. I challenge even the most patient among you to sit through all half-dozen. Even with breaks, I’m not certain it can be done without cracking. Title notwithstanding, striptease is just a part of the proceedings, with pure-vanilla […]
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Haywire
Similarly, he’s now built a movie around MMA fighter Gina Carano. The difference is that Haywire is no throwaway, for-the-fun-of-it flick, but a legitimate art film and literate espionage vehicle. Double-crossed in a Barcelona job, “company” agent Mallory Kane (Carano) finds herself set up — by her boss and lover, no less (Ewan McGregor, Beginners) […]
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The Avengers
During its two hours and 22 minutes, plenty of time existed for it to grab my attention. That moment never arrived. The major problems, as I see them: • It’s clearly overstuffed. Everyone complained when Batman and Spider-Man sequels stacked three villains against a single superhero. The Avengers gives us one main bad guy (albeit […]
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The Story of Rock ’n’ Roll Comics
The comics were “unauthorized and proud of it” biographies of famous bands, from KISS to New Kids on the Block, all printed by Todd Loren. They had their followers (Alice Cooper, Mojo Nixon, Cynthia Plaster Caster) and their detractors, resulting in plenty of legal issues (no pun intended). Was Loren, the film asks, a First […]
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The House Across the Street / Homicide
House is the better of the two, opening on the suburbian utopia of Hopkins Street on the morning of April 20. It’s a placid existence, complete with home delivery from the milkman. But when a phony postal worker knocks off a would-be trial witness on the watch of a rookie cop, there goes the neighborhood. […]